Living On Another Planet

I often wonder why so many Americans refuse to see the problem that is Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. There seems to be a tendency to "blame the victim" rather than the perpetrator. The cartoon issue is just the most recent example. The cartoonist themselves are condemned for offending Muslims, but the Muslims who want them killed are less so. The invasion of Iraq is blamed for Islamic terrorism in the Middle East, but somehow I must have missed all those American troops were in Baghdad when the planes flew into the World Trade Center towers. The fact of the matter is that while planning was being made for that terrorist attack in Afghanistan, the mean ole U.S.A. was providing more aid to that famine stricken country than anyone else. That was in spite of them harboring Osama bin-Laden who was wanted for terrorist attacks against U.S. embassies in Africa. Many of the problems of the Middle East are blamed on Israel. Somehow, a country that is just over 8000 square miles (compared to over 6 million square miles that make up Arab countries) and has just under 7 million people, of whom almost 20% are Arabs (compared to about 300 million Arabs outside Israel) causes otherwise sane, tolerant people to strap bombs to themselves and blow up buses, pizza parlors and skyscrapers. As for the belief that the anger is over their treatment of Palestinians (who are ethnically, religiously and culturally no different from other Arabs), that's a laugh. Palestinians are treated like garbage in other Arab countries. Arabs in Israel have more rights (the right to vote) than most Arabs in Arabic countries, not to mention more rights (right to freely practice their religion) than non-Muslims in Muslim countries.

So, where's the problem? One area just might be higher education. Normally, it's political correctness run amok. I can cite numerous examples of students or faculty members facing punishment for holding politically incorrect views. One of the biggest is the recent resignation of Lawrence Summers at Harvard. It's not often that a former cabinet member of the Clinton administration is considered too conservative, but apparently this one is for the Harvard faculty. His greatest crime was saying that innate gender differences (along with discrimination and social reasons) may explain why there weren't more women in higher level faculty positions in math and science. Just because it was an academic conference and there is a body of research indicating the possibility of such things is no reason to allow anyone to deviate from the PC playground. Yet, as long as you come from the poor, discriminated Muslim population, true misogyny is fine. I just found out that an ambassador at large for the Taliban wasn't just accepted into Yale, he was actively recruited into Yale in spite of being a fourth grade dropout (although he did get a GED). I guess noting that men and women are different is far worse than representing a government that put women down to the level of livestock. Actually, that's wrong. Under the Taliban, women were worth less than livestock.

This cluelessness isn't just academia. It's also national media. A recent Newsweek article shows just how out of touch some of them are. Somehow the Dutch have become the intolerant ones because they want Muslim immigrants to actually accept their values. Values like women's rights and not brutally murdering someone on the streets because he offends an abusive culture. Yet, somehow, the Dutch are portrayed as wrong. Of course, the Newsweek writer doesn't have a clue what's going on. Back when there was rioting in France, the international press went out of their way to avoid pointing out that all the rioters seemed to be Muslims. One reporter was so clueless about what was happening that she actually referred to the Tunisian immigrants who started the whole thing as "African-Americans" which is taking the whole PC thing a bit too far. Actually, Newsweek is definitely behind because the Dutch pushback against Muslim immigration began long before the cartoons (actually, the cartoons were probably part of that). It began even before the Van Gogh murder. In 2002, Pim Fortuyn was set to make a strong showing in Dutch parliamentary elections on an anti-Muslim immigration platform, but he was murdered by an animal rights nut. The inherent stupidity of the press was very present at the time because they insisted he was a "Far Right" politician because of his views. This was in spite of the fact that he was a gay, sociology professor. Much like the Newsweek article, it was assumed that he must have been an enemy of tolerance and multiculturalism because of his anti-Muslim stance. Actually, his anti-Muslim stance was to protect the tolerance and multiculturalism of Dutch society from an immigrant community that refused to assimilate into that open society. He knew that unfettered immigration would lead to a violent sub-population opposed to the liberal Dutch society. Unfortunately, Europe is beginning to realize the same thing.